girlsketch_111907

girlsketch_111907, originally uploaded by basest.

Don't have much to say today...or much time to write the many words I normally use to say so little. So here's a little sketch I whipped off in a minute or two.

I liked the energy of the drawing. Unfortunately, when I was finished, I realized her head wasn't properly attached to her body. I fixed it in the scan.

I'm interested in Truth in art...but sometimes you have to massage the truth a little bit to make it palatable.

art therapy

Over the weekend, I spent a good portion of time coaxing the likeness of a dead man and his wife out of a charcoal pencil. I happen to be able to somewhat accurately render people's portraits in a variety of media--charcoal, oil paint, watercolor. I can't recall when I discovered this skill, but I have reasonably good portraits dating back to high school. Actually, I have a pretty nice piece that I drew of my grandfather who died when I was in 8th grade. I'm better now...but for that age, I wasn't bad.

When I was younger, most of my subjects had been alive when I drew them. Often they were girls to whom I was trying to ingratiate myself. (They were flattered, but I rarely achieved my intended objective.)

Around this time of year in 1999, I quickly drew a portrait of Polly's dad for use on the memorial folder at his wake/funeral. This turned out to be a good marketing move. That drawing has led to a fair amount of portrait commissions. I haven't exactly kept track of it, but I'm pretty certain that I have sold more portraits than any other kind of art. Not that I've really focused on selling my art.

While I have been commissioned to do a fair amount of live people--children, engagement portraits, that sort of thing--I have also drawn probably more than my share of dead people. I don't mind. It's nice that I can do it, and those left behind often appreciate it. It has lead to the occasional awkward exchange. I can think of at least one family member who liked the memorial portrait I had done of one relative or other that he wanted to be sure that when he shuffled off this mortal coil, I was ready to capture his likeness. I don't think I have to work from his actual corpse. I think it's probably okay to use a photo.

Which begs the question: is it a life drawing or a still life? Not a bad name for an exhibition of these death portraits...something to consider.

Speaking of exhibits, recently I entered a not-so-recent painting into a local art show. I felt a bit fraudulent, because my artistic output has mostly been limited to random sketches, some illustrations for theatre posters and the occasional portrait commission. The piece I entered was done in 2000. However, the requirements for the show was that the artist resided in the Fox Valley area, the work was ready to hang and it hadn't been entered in this same show in previous years. Age didn't matter. I presume the Mona Lisa could have been entered, if the Louvre was inclined to loan it out. And if Leonardo DaVinci's remains had been exhumed and moved to Aurora.

The show is called "Vicinity 2007" and the theme is that all the artists live within some radius of the gallery. I entered in the show for a couple reasons. There were five monetary prizes, one for $1000 and four for $250. Those would have been nice, but I really didn't expect to win. (And I would have really thought myself a fraud if I had won, since the work was so old. Still would have cashed the check, though.) The real reason was to pad my resume. I want to get in the habit of making art work and exhibiting it, and I wanted more juried shows to name check for that purpose.

About a year and a half ago, I did a solo exhibit of my work. All of it was old work. It was my intent that it would be the last time this stuff was shown, and I would start to make new work. I called the show "Cobwebs" and promised myself that I would take this opportunity to dust off my creativity and start to make new work. My hope was to have built up a large enough body of work to do another solo exhibit of new work within a year.

I broke that promise.

So feeling like a bit of a failure, I attended the opening reception for the Vicinity show yesterday. It was a bit of an odd experience, but would have been odder if I had more invested emotionally in it. I went with Polly and her mother, and we took the three kids along. I wasn't crazy about the idea of taking the kids along. Polly didn't think it would be a big deal. Nothing that happened at the exhibit change either of our opinions. Our kids are relatively well behaved (with the exception of Rosalie, who at 2 has taken the idea of the terrible twos to heart). No scenes were made. No art was ripped off the walls. Ultimately, I wasn't able to relax and focus on the event and look at the art and hang around anonymously near my painting and listen to other people's comments about it because I was more focused on what the kids were doing. So I guess it's just a matter of opinion. That said, I did enjoy talking to Ross (my six-year old) about the art. I just would rather have done it when the gallery was less occupied.

I didn't win any prizes. Not even an honorable mention. I don't know if I would have known before the event whether or not my work had been awarded. Even so: while I would have felt a fraud had I won anything, and didn't expect to win a little part of me was disappointed. I guess I'm just a little bit human.

(The piece I entered in the exhibit is below...it's a portrait of my uncle and grandmother from a photo taken when they were in Cuba, juxtaposed with political iconography. There was a theme running through my work about 7 years ago that dealt with some of those ideas.)


santos de la revolución 2000, originally uploaded by basest.

Phoctober

okay...
So here's the deal. Maht over at the Moontopples blog took some really nice photos in late september and thought that he'd commit to doing a photo post every day in the month of October. He called it "Phoctober" because it sounded vaguely dirty. He invited anyone who wanted to participate to join in the Phoctober festivities, and to let him know, and he'd link back to those who joined in the fun.

He even linked back to my birth control test post without me asking him to do so. Awfully nice of him to do so, since I had intended to participate, and kept putting it off.

Last night, I went through some of the photos I took throughout the month of october, intending to do one big Phoctober post that sort of chronicled my month in visual terms. Most of the photos I took were of weather phenomena. There were some foggy morning shots, as well as some beautiful sunrises that looked like Maxfield Parrish had painted the sky above my house. And then there were the photographs I took of my son Ross the day he had an angry confrontation with some pavement.

Apparently one of his friends was tugging on Ross' shirt and let go. Ross tumbled forward and hit the ground, resulting in some nasty looking abrasions.

We weren't super concerned about this...kids will get hurt. I don't really like it when the kids get hurt. But I do like to take photos of their injuries, if they are particularly notable. I'm just weird that way.

As I was deciding which photos to run for my Phoctober post, I had some difficulty deciding how to crop the photo of Ross' injury. It was interesting to me to see how the photo changed depending on how I chose to frame it. This quickly became more fascinating to me than the various weather phenomena I photographed. The photos are at turns sad...chilling...defiant...confrontational.

I'm curious how each photo affects you, blogreader. Let me know what you think. Does each one affect you differently? Or am I just a bit mad?

Just remember: no children were intentionally harmed in the posting of this blog.

Mustachioed!

or, Another way in which I don't measure up...

Much to my amusement, I discovered today that there exists an institute dedicated to "protecting the rights of, and fighting discrimination against, mustached Americans by promoting the growth, care, and culture of the mustache." The American Mustache Institute has a snappy logo, a website and (I presume) a headquarters of some sort. They participate in mustache-awareness events, such as their recent " 'Stache Bash '07", compile mustache related news stories, honor mustachioed celebrities, and provide financial support to charities. They do seem to have a bit of a sense of humour about the whole thing, which is nice.

Alas, it is a club that I do not believe I could join. The fact is, I am incapable of growing a significant mustache. Mind you, I don't have any burning desire to wear a mustache. In fact, I have a couple nice theatrical ones that I could always spirit gum to my upper lip if the need should arise. However, whenever I allow my own facial hair to grow--on occasion it was required of me for a theatrical endeavor, sometimes I've just let it grow to see what would happen, and most often, i was just too lazy to shave--the result is less than impressive.

As a young boy on the cusp of puberty, a mustache seemed to me an outward expression of my approaching manhood. If I could grow a mustache, people would understand that I was growing in other ways. Besides, it was the early-mid '80's. Magnum P.I. was still on, and Tom Selleck was considered desirable. I'm not sure anyone really noticed my facial hair. There are some bad photos floating around (assuming I didn't destroy them all) in which I look a bit like Joseph Gribble from King of the Hill (with poofier hair). Eventually, I realized how bad this looked, and took to shaving regularly. At the time, regularly meant once a week.

I was about 18 when I complained to my brother's then-girlfriend that I hated to shave, and wished I could do it less often (I was up to about three times a week at that point). She suggested I wax my mustache, as it would do a better job than a razor, and would last longer between treatments. I had to let my facial hair grow as the burns on my upper lip healed. I never tried that again.

Once I could shave again, I did it very regularly for the next few years. And then I was cast as Rosencrantz in a college production of Hamlet. All the men in the cast were instructed to allow their facial hair to grow. By the time the production opened some months later (it was an abnormally long production cycle from casting to opening night), there were varying thicknesses and lengths of beards and mustaches. I was one of the oldest cast members, however, I had to use makeup to enhance my beard for the show. (I have a photo from that time...I'll try to dig it up and post it.) A year or so later, I faced a similar situation when I played Mordred in Camelot, and again a couple years later as Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing. The only saving grace during that period of time in my life was that it was during the grunge era, and there was a LOT of bad facial hair around.

Somewhere in this period of time, I also took to shaving my head every so often. This was when I was playing in a couple bands, and for some reason, a lot of bass players seemed to have shaved heads and wore goatees. This isn't why I shaved my head (I really just liked it). But Maht (of MoonTopples fame) joked that all the bands we liked had bald bass players with goatees, and I would tell him that I could deliver a bald bass player, but couldn't do much about the goatee.

Currently, I grow facial hair quickly enough that I really ought to shave every day, but I still only do it every other day. If I feel like it. I will let it go for a few days if I'm feeling particularly lazy. However, it is clear to me that while my facial hair does grow a little bit fuller than it did 13 years or so ago when I did Hamlet, there are still some significant gaps that haven't filled in.

For me to achieve mustache success on the level of a Tom Selleck or Salvador Dali, I will have to rely on my glue-on one. Perhaps I could even wear it to the next 'Stache Bash and do a little reconnaissance...

sketch o' the day...mother's day edition

Today's sketch o' the day--an irregular feature here at mad scribblings--comes to you courtesy of the Hallmark Corporation and the notion of Mother's Day in general. As has become something of a tradition, I got up early with the boys and I facilitated them in making some cards for their mother and grandmother.

I don't know if tradition is the right word. It's pretty much just what happens due to a combination of procrastination and an attempt to keep them occupied and quiet so Polly can sleep.

So the boys worked on their cards. Neither one has yet to demonstrate any innate skill in the visual arts, but they love to try...and they do have active imaginations. So maybe one day their talent will emerge and they can make the decision not to have a respectable career as a doctor or lawyer or even a podiatrist and instead make all the wrong choices and end up a failure on a dead-end career path like their dad.

While they worked, I attempted to draw them...turns out the little boogers are moving targets. Very difficult to draw. After a few failed attempts, I did arrive a a pretty decent likeness of Jack.

and so it goes...

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

I woke up too early this morning. I had slept on the couch. Often in situation comedies, men find themselves sleeping on the couch because of arguments they have had with their spouses. It is a cliché locale for banishment. This was not the case for me.

I don't much care for my couch. It was purchased new to fill an available space when we moved into our home two and a half years ago, and it quickly became clear that the couch was not going to last very long. It's a bad couch. The cushions don't stay on the couch very well. They slide around and quickly get out of shape. It began to get threadbare within just a few weeks of its arrival. And so on.

Ironically, the couch bears some responsibility for the reason I ended up sleeping on it. I was carrying my son Jack two mornings ago. As I leaned over to drop him onto the couch, something snapped. Or pinched. One of the millions of nerves in this amazing body I live in was affected in just the right way to create the sensation of having been punched reasonably hard in the middle of the left side of my back.

That night, I had a difficult time sleeping in our bed, so I chose to sleep on the couch last night instead. It was a little bit better. I slept more consistently, but still woke up earlier than I had intended to and in more pain than before I went to bed in the first place.

So I got up to get a drink of water and like any reasonable person with an unreasonable addiction, I checked my email. I found it to be somewhat unfulfilling, so I hit the news sites to see what had happened while I was sleeping. Sadly, I learned that it was reported that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

I was turned on to Vonnegut many years ago by my friend Maht, and quickly consumed many of his works. He quickly became one of my favourite authors. He's an incredibly deep thinker who often presented his ideas in a deceptively simple form. Vonnegut also had a cameo role, appearing as himself in the Rodney Dangerfield film "Back to School."

Like my last post about Sol LeWitt (I have to stop writing about people dying--I'm in danger of getting into some kind of rut), I'm not going to attempt to analyze Vonnegut. It's been done. I could probably babble on at length about how great he was--what an amazing body of work he left and all that. I might even be able to write intelligently about his work. But I think his work stands for itself, so here's a link to an essay he wrote about three years ago regarding the current state of the world. It's called "Cold Turkey." It's really great. Read it.

One of the things I really liked about Kurt Vonnegut was that he would occasionally embellish his novels with simple line drawings. Later in life, Vonnegut extended this to creating artworks that were made into lithographs. The drawings on this page are all by Vonnegut. I always wanted to buy one of his prints...never could afford one. I doubt that's going to be any easier now. There's probably a few novels out there that I haven't read yet. Maybe I'll go buy one and read it.

R.I.P. Sol LeWitt

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
– Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967.

Sol LeWitt died over the weekend. He was a pioneer in the conceptual art movement. His writings on the subject served as the foundation for a lot of interesting thought regarding art and the importance of the artist's hand in the work. Many people who have given his work a lot more thought than I have have written about him, so I won't spend too much time trying to analyze his contribution to art and the importance of his work. The truth is, I'm not much of a fan.

LeWitt posited that it was the concept that was paramount in a work of art, and the artists hand was irrelevant. He would write detailed instructions describing the execution of a piece and his assistants would execute it. In fact, he believed that anyone could execute one of his works, if they followed the directions. Pretty cerebral stuff.

Of course, I hate this idea. My own work is all about my hand making the images. The stray marks, the accidents and the translation from my minds eye to the paper or canvas are what thrills me about art making. The frustration that comes from my inability to produce the image I imagine and the joy of creating something better than I had expected are all part of the process.

But I think the moves that LeWitt made were interesting ones, and I admire that he followed his theories to their logical conclusion. And his theories, and those of other eminent conceptual artists challenged me during my time in art school. It made me consider the work that I was doing, and informed that work.

In 1969, Sol LeWitt published his "Sentences on Conceptual Art." Here they are for your reading pleasure. Some interesting stuff...

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His willfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.